Ankara's Mayor Mansur Yavaş has openly thrown his support behind main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in a move that is set to complicate the presidential candidate debate further for the six-party opposition alliance.
Türkiye’s main opposition parties, the secularist CHP and the center-right Good Party (IP), have allied themselves with four smaller parties, the Felicity Party (SP), the Future Party (GP), the Democrat Party (DP) and the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), under a united platform called the Nation Alliance to challenge incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) are partners under the People's Alliance, with Erdoğan serving as their candidate for the upcoming presidential elections.
The president earlier on Saturday confirmed his intention to hold the much-anticipated vote on May 14.
Plunged in internal debates and bickering over policy and strategy, the six-party opposition, however, has yet to put forth a presidential candidate, while the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which has so far been excluded from the alliance despite being the third-largest in Parliament, has announced plans to field its own candidate.
Yavaş’s chances in the presidential race were previously dismissed by the HDP and the CHP.
Despite having the endorsement of IP Chair Meral Akşener, who has repeatedly vetoed a potential Kılıçdaroğlu candidacy in favor of Yavaş or Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, the mayor has turned the table and fully endorsed his fellow CHP member Kılıçdaroğlu.
“We hope you can attend the opening of this park as president,” Yavaş told Kılıçdaroğlu on Sunday as he spoke during a visit to a recreational park being built in Ankara, to big applause from the audience.
Yavaş was elected in 2019 as the candidate of the Nation Alliance. As the "table for six," a moniker frequently used by and about the opposition alliance, struggles to name a candidate, Kılıçdaroğlu has numerous times stepped forward, saying on multiple occasions he would indeed run for president.
But his failure to light up opinion polls has caused divisions within the alliance as the topic of a presidential candidate to rival Erdoğan remains a pressing issue as it runs out of time.
The bloc’s other leader Akşener is insistent on endorsing Yavaş or Imamoğlu. She was even accused of undermining her partner Kılıçdaroğlu last month during Imamoğlu’s case in which he was handed a prison sentence and a political ban for “insulting public officials” in a speech he made about a repeat of the 2019 mayoral election.
The verdict, which significantly jeopardizes Imamoğlu’s candidacy if approved, had sparked a backlash from the opposition who called supporters into the streets for an impromptu rally the same day.
At the time, Kılıçdaroğlu was in Germany for an enterprising visit and Akşener made the trip to Istanbul from Ankara in a show of support for Imamoğlu. The two had stood side by side on the stage holding hands, painting a picture of seemingly perfect solidarity.
Akşener’s move was criticized as an “effort to bypass” Kılıçdaroğlu, with MHP Chair Devlet Bahçeli claiming the two “exposed the bloc’s accumulated and honed objections to Kılıçdaroğlu” with their display.
Kılıçdaroğlu himself had accused Akşener of “meddling in internal party affairs” when he returned from Germany. The IP leader’s response was relentless, saying she could get “really cross.”
She later claimed her party would “come first” in polls and that she would become prime minister “without asking anyone for anything."
Many interpreted her pointed remarks about “cozying it up behind closed doors” as targeting Kılıçdaroğlu and that she could in fact run against Kılıçdaroğlu.
The endless bickering at the "table for six" only reveals an alliance in disarray. More internal conflicts have recently surfaced regarding how the unknown candidate would act if elected, as well. GP Chair Ahmet Davutoğlu even argued the candidate would be steered by the instructions of the alliance in making decisions for specific assignments, stirring up debates about whether it would be constitutional to have such a “puppet president.”
Erdoğan himself swung at their infighting, saying they would “run the country with six, even 10 people” behind the curtain.
“They want to have a puppet president they will manage. They imagine a commander-in-chief who would serve as an aide to members of the ‘table for six.’ They want voters to elect an unknown candidate without any vision or plans,” he said.
Kılıçdaroğlu has recently affirmed that the alliance is fine with holding the country's next parliamentary and presidential elections on May 14, days after a CHP official revealed the bloc would reveal its presidential candidate in February.
Amid inconsistencies, the leaders of the six parties are also set to come together for their 11th summit hosted by the IP on Jan. 30, four days before they are set to reveal the two documents containing their proposals for a transitional period to a parliamentary system and their government program.
The 2023 elections will likely be the first time with two rounds as it will be the first since the country switched to a presidential system of governance.
